Madness
by AbhorsenSabriel87
Summary: It is beginning; the slow descent into insanity.


The madness was all-consuming. He could feel it in his flesh, his blood, his very bones in every waking second. Even in a state of unconsciousness, he could see it teeming at the edge of his thoughts, slowly picking apart the paper thin walls keeping them from ravaging his barely sane mind. It was frightening, of that he was sure, but at the same time he contemplated the outcome of simply letting them in, those hushed whispers and scraping claws that sounded so very like hissing snakes. It was a tempting experiment – one that would surely provide him with an interesting conclusion…

Sharp pain tore through his shoulder, and the good doctor jerked awake from his fitful sleep. Sweat gleamed thickly across his patchwork skin, the scars standing out as stark white lines in the moonlight. His thin hand reached up and grasped the aching muscles of his left shoulder, a memory of a past fight still lingering as his thoughts teemed with snakes and triplicate eyes of fear, rage, and insanity. Willing himself to move, the hand slowly began to massage the pain away and he rotated the sore joint to aid the process. This calmed him somewhat, though Dr. Stein was always a calm sort of crazy in one way or another.

Picking his glasses carefully from the oddly crafted nightstand, he placed them on his face, the round lenses catching the light streaming unobtrusively from the crooked window beside his eccentric bed. Like him, everything in the room showed signs of patchwork; of being taken apart, dissected, and put back into existence without any real sign caring which part actually fit the one it was bound to.

Stark white hair fell across his gaunt face, and he picked up another object from the bedside table, jerking it upwards once to free its confined contents. They rattled slightly within their wrapping; he'd have to purchase more in the morning if he was going to make it through a day of class. He grasped the cancer stick lightly between his lips and removed it from the company of it brethren, pausing before switching the object in his possession for what would make it truly lethal. The lighter's flame flared to life in a single scratch of metal on flint, casting a yellow-orange glow over the pale visage as it lit the cigarette's tip into a smoldering ash. He released the mechanism, allowing the flame to die before his hands dropped to the patchwork sheets once more, his back hunched and bony without the familiar turtleneck sweater and lab coat to hide it. He did not breathe in the nicotine yet, however – his thoughts were on other matters, drifting along in a dark sea of his own personal madness.

Finally, he lifted his hand to his lips and drew a breath, the sweet smoke brought down into his lungs with a relish of a thirsty man finding water. He held it there for a moment, eyes shut as he relaxed further, then exhaled the smoke in a thin jet. He felt better now, not quite so on edge, though he still felt it lingering there… that madness that damnable snake witch had set loose on the world.

"Don't forget the madness I gave _you_, Dr. Frankenstein." Her voice drifted over to him from the apparition that had manifested itself beneath the window when his eyes had been closed. Her sharp face, framed by straw-colored hair, was set in a serpentine smile and her golden eyes were slit as usual. A truly cunning look on her, and one that looked more smug every time he saw it. "I would hate to see the gift I've given you cast aside so carelessly and taken for granted," she continued, attempting to look and sound hurt despite the obvious insincerity. "I worked to hard to free Ashura, even giving up my life so that the Kishin may let the world finally escape stagnation. Surely you can't take that for granted."

He said nothing. He knew the witch was only a figment of his imagination – a side effect of the madness lurking both within and without. Besides, she was a woman who loved the sound of her torment upon others; she'd begin speaking again soon enough.

He was not disappointed. She appeared at his side in a brief flicker of shadow, a ghost of warm flesh leaning into his shoulder with the care of a long-time companion. Her hand rested lightly on his arm (he could _feel_ it there… how interesting) and her lips pressed against the scar she'd left on his shoulder. Her scent drifted on the air, something soft and feminine and similarly reptilian in nature. "It doesn't matter, though, this pitiful attempt of yours at sanity. You _will_ be consumed, and then…" She chuckled, her lips brushing at the scar that wound its way across his face and beneath his ear to burrow deeply in the shaggy white locks. He repressed a shiver, instead taking another slow, steady drag from his poison of choice rather than face the one he really wanted.

"And then, my dear Stein… you'll be all mine."

He sat in the darkness for gods knew how long, tingles tracing across his flesh from where her ghostly and psychosomatic hands had been. Ash collected in a pile on the bedsheet, the ember long since cold. Letting it drop, he reached up slowly, slowing as he came to where those serpentine lips had rested… then settling on the head of the bolt protruding from his scalp. Something felt wrong in his brain now… there was a puzzle in the air…

_Clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclik…_

He turned the hardware over and over, thinking distantly on the problem at hand. He was so close to an answer…

_Clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclick…_

What use would the madness bring him? Why should he even ponder the scenario in the first place? He'd held himself on the brink for so long, it seemed right and natural to fight the flow of omnipresent insanity.

_Clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclick…_

He toiled away, turning the ideas over again and again, his hand working rhythmically to match his churning thoughts. Then again, he had his own madness to understand, his own compulsions and sins to master. How he wished he could dissect a thought as easily as he could flesh and blood, to slice its muscles away from bone, to peel away all the surface layers of skin and fat and lies and facts to reveal the bare and naked truth. It would be so much easier… and yet, he found this more thrilling. To gamble his own sanity in this grand experiment…

_Clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclick…clickclickclickclick…_

"Medusa… you certainly leave me with quite the puzzle," he murmurs to no one, his hand cranking without the full scope of his consciousness. "But then again, I've never had a problem that I can't solve. All I need to do is…" He grins wickedly, humanity strikingly absent as things fall into place once again.

"**Dissect it."**

_Clack._


End file.
